Well it’s been a few weeks since I switched the blog over to WordPress. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how things have gone, but I still have much to work on. WordPress is like all closed systems (Mac, I’m looking at YOU). It is super easy, convenient and perfect to do the things it was intended for, but when you need to do things with it that are a bit unconventional, it is harder to do them than it would be outside the system. Here’s some of what I’m working on:
- RECIPES – when I switched to WP, my recipes, which were contained in a different table than my posts, were converted into posts in WP (this just seemed logical). So basically, I wrote a nifty script that would write statements to insert each recipe into the WP posts database (and do a few other things as well). I tested it before I went ahead and everything seemed fine. Indeed, I thought it was wildly successful until a couple of days ago when I discovered that for some strange reason some of my recipes contained data from other recipes (sometimes 4 or 5 other recipes!!) followed by their own. Very strange indeed. So obviously I need to correct this … probably by deleting the recipe posts and inserting them all over again. BAH HUMBUG.
- Also, I implemented “recipes” as its own category, but put each sub-category of recipe as a tag … but I don’t think I like this and now I want to switch them to sub-categories of “recipes” instead. Luckily, WP will easily allow me to do this with one or two quick SQL commands. Hurrah.
- All of my the “pages” from the old system (which are all still there … index just doesn’t link to them anymore) that I still want to have around like our favorite recipes, crafts, and links need to be implemented in some way in the WP system. This is definitely a case of easier OUTSIDE WP than within it. These will be implemented as pages and will need pesky things like custom PHP in the main part of the page and custom menus in the “sidebar”. And all of this takes some studying on my part. I’m sure I’ll be a better person for it … right?
- I am also interested in implementing “thumbnails” for posts to pretty things up. I’ve investigated this somewhat, but so far it seems like a colossal pain in the arse. I am very entrenched with Flickr and it does not seem to play too nicely with WP (though I do like my Flickr Gallery plugin) and it is seeming like I may have to manually add thumbnails even when a post already has a linked image. Kind of makes me want to scream. I’m experimenting with other options.
- I have also been troubled by my LACK OF LAPTOP. My laptop was packed up in the box from our new toilet and shipped out this week so the folks at Sager can do surgery on it. The netbook is not working and is not really excellent for doing more than websurfing on anyhow. So I cashed in all of our credit card rewards and paid for a new laptop (that alone should probably freak you out). This probably seems like an extreme maneuver in the face of not having a laptop for a few weeks, but I have some work for a client that NEEDS to be done and Matt was in need of a laptop anyhow. So Amazon is delivering the laptop today. w00t!
- And in case you’re counting, that WILL make six computers in our house, not counting Matt’s crappy work laptop (the thing seriously takes 5 minutes to boot up and is running Win2K) or Uncle Buck’s visiting computer. I think we need to start our own chapter of Computer Nerds Anonymous.
Insanity.